all others by discerning connoisseurs--and it is tempting to assign to
this famous period the illustrations in a manuscript belonging to Mr.
Herramaneck, now in the possession of Mr. Arthur Ruck, from which are
drawn the paintings reproduced on Plate I. This temptation is
strengthened by the fact that the manuscript is said to be dated 1398;
yet it is a temptation to which I am unwilling to yield. Rather, I
incline to think that these are the work of an early contemporary of
Behzad, by whom they are not influenced, and that they belong,
therefore, to that interesting period of transition which lies between
the Timourids of the fifteenth and the Sefevaeans of the sixteenth
century. If we turn to the _Burlington Magazine_ for October 1912, we
can compare our Plate I, a, with two paintings, one in M. Claude Anet's
collection dating from the fourteenth century, the other from M.
Meyer-Riefstahl's belonging to the fifteenth. All have Mongol
affinities: but in M. Anet's picture, though the rather finicking and
academic drawing of the tree shows that already under the early
Timourids the full Persian style was developed, there are yet to be
found traces of a monumental design that had almost disappeared by the
end of the fifteenth century.
The work here illustrated is too "descriptive" and not sufficiently
"monumental" to be assigned to the Timourid age, and so I give it to the
late fifteenth century, to those delicious years when the old tradition,
though weakened, had not been smothered under the scenic delicacies
brought into fashion by Behzad. If the Timourid age is to be dubbed the
Persian _quattrocento_, Mr. Ruck's man will pass muster as the
counterpart of some artist older than Raphael, who worked independently
of the young prodigy unaffected by his ultimately disastrous inventions.
From an album, also in the possession of Mr. Arthur Ruck, comes a
drawing signed by Behzad and reproduced on Plate II, c. On the
genuineness of the signature I cannot pretend to an opinion, but there
seem to be no solid grounds for disputing it. The work itself is
characteristic enough. It is accomplished and tasteful; it is also thin
in quality and the forms are indifferently co-ordinated. It is, in
fact, a very pretty piece of illustration; it is not a profoundly moving
design. Compared with figure A on Plate I it is tight and unlovely:
compared with the masterpieces of the thirteenth century it is not even
what a picture by Raphael is to a picture by Giotto; if, historically,
Behzad is the Raphael of Persia, aesthetically, he is a very inferior
one.
It is in the post-Behzad art, their Sefevaean art of the sixteenth
century, that the Persians have the advantage of us. The miniatures of
this age were, until lately, reckoned by European collectors the
masterpieces of Persian painting, and the decline of their reputation
may be compared with that of those later _cinquecentiste_ who stood so
high in the taste of the eighteenth century. The descent, however, has
been less sharp as the error was less glaring. After Behzad there is no
such tumble as befell Italian art in the last days of the Renaissance.
On the contrary, as my final illustrations (also drawn from Mr. Ruck's
scrap-book) show, the Persian art of the sixteenth century maintained a
very high level. The ladder picture (Plate III, D) is, I presume, by
Sultan Mohamed. For my part I prefer it to the Behzad. It is less
mechanical; and I find in it none of that weary pomposity, that gesture
of the great man who knows his business too well, which so often
displeases me in the master. Sultan Mohamed was, so the story goes, a
pupil of Aga Mirek, who was a pupil of Behzad.
This charming Sultan Mohamed belongs to the middle of the sixteenth
century, and its companion illustration (Plate III, E) may be placed
some twenty years later. About this last, however, it would be easy and
excusable to go wrong; for from the local colour and the head of the man
who leads the horse it would seem to have been painted in India. We know
that the album from which it comes was for many years in that country;
yet I cannot believe that this picture is the product of any
Indo-Persian school. It is too good: there persists too much of the
great Timourid and Mongol tradition which, as the work of Sultan Mohamed
shows, was still cherished by the Persian artists of the sixteenth
century. That it is earlier than the seventeenth century and the reign
of Shah Abbas is beyond dispute; it is untainted, or almost untainted,
with that soft, slick, convictionless woolliness that was brought to
perfection by Riza Abbassi, the court painter, and seems to have
flattered so happily the taste of the Persian _grand monarque_. The
figure of the kneeling princess comes nearer to the style of Mirek than
to that of any other artist with whom I am acquainted; and, if I must
hazard a guess, I will suggest that this is the work of some Persian
pupil of Mirek who went to try his luck at the court of the Great Mogul.
With Shah Abbas and the seventeenth century Persian art becomes
definitely and hopelessly second-rate. From the ruins emerge a variety
of decadent schools of which two deserve mention. The academic school
continued the Behzad tradition, and its hard but capable style did well
enough for copying Persian old masters, European paintings by such
artists as Bellini, and engravings by such artisans as Marcantonio--an
amusing product of this last kind of activity (also from a book in Mr.
Ruck's possession) will be reproduced later in the _Burlington
Magazine_. At the same time there appeared a freer and softer style,
examples of which, at first sight, sometimes remind one of a
particularly good Conder. In India developed a number of schools,
romantic, picturesque, and literal; of these, a queer sensual charm
notwithstanding, it must be confessed that the two main characteristics
are weakness of design and a sweetly sugary colour. But I am straying
beyond any boundary that my illustrations could justify. I have been
able to give excellent examples of the late middle period of Persian
painting. In the two first we caught an echo of the great Timourid age
and felt a premonition of the good Sefevaean: in the last we see how
splendid Persian painting could be in its decline. I wish I could have
reproduced examples to show how glorious was its youth and early
manhood.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] To make the most of an article of this sort the reader ought,
obviously, to have illustrations by him. For these, in the original
even, I was obliged to refer to back numbers of the _Burlington
Magazine_, and now I must refer also to the plates that accompanied this
article when first it appeared.
[17] In the collections of M. Henraux and M. Claude Anet. Reproduced in
the _Burlington Magazine_, October 1912.
COUNTERCHECK QUARRELSOME
[Sidenote: _New Statesman Mar. 1914_]
I hasten to accept Mr. Randall Davies's offer of friendship,[18] though
I doubt whether much good can come of it if we are to go on arguing
about aesthetics. We are too far apart. What Mr. Davies feels for a
picture is something altogether different from what he feels for a
carpet, whereas the emotion I feel for a carpet is of exactly the same
kind as the emotion I feel for a picture, a statue, a cathedral, or a
pot. Also, my whole system of aesthetics is based on this psychological
fact, so that it would, perhaps, have been wiser in Mr. Davies to have
stated the difference between us and let it go at that.
If some one were to find fault with the _New Statesman_ on account of
the flimsiness and inadequacy of the arguments it adduces in favour of
private ownership of railways, the editor, being a polite man, would
reply, I suppose, that his critic had misunderstood the policy of the
paper: he would not feel that his arguments had received any very
damaging blow. In my first chapter I made it clear--my publishers
accused me of becoming repetitious about it--that what I wanted to
discover was a quality common and peculiar to all those objects I called
works of art; I explained that by "works of art" I meant objects that
provoked in me a peculiar emotion, called aesthetic; and I repeated over
and over again that amongst these objects were pictures, pots, textiles,
statues, buildings, etc. Mr. Davies's sharp eyes have enabled him to
perceive either that my hypothesis--that "significant form" is the
essential quality in a work of art--leads to the inclusion of Persian
carpets amongst works of art, or that the hypothesis that representation
is the essence of art excludes them: I am not sure which. Anyway, this
much is certain, either both pictures and carpets can be works of art or
they cannot. I set out from the hypothesis that pictures and carpets, or
rather some pictures and some carpets, are works of art; and therefore I
am less inclined to feel crushed by Mr. Davies's discovery that my
premises follow from my conclusions than to inquire why Mr. Davies does
not consider carpets and pots and buildings works of art, or, if, after
all, he does consider them works of art, to what class he relegates
pictures and statues. My object is to discover some quality common and
peculiar to all works of art. Such a quality there must be unless when
we use the term "works of art" we gibber. Does Mr. Davies assert that
only pictures and statues can be works of art? Or are we to assume that
he gibbers?
Even if I cannot argue profitably with my new friend I may be able to
give him a useful hint. For though, as he wittily observes, he is still
much older than I am, it is conceivable that I enjoy a wider aesthetic
experience.
"To look for the same qualities in a carpet and a picture would be
equally absurd, seeing that one is intended to hang on the wall and
the other to be laid on the floor. If any one doubts this, let him
frame his carpets and put his canvases over the parquet."
To hang on the wall was, of course, precisely the purpose for which many
of the finest Oriental carpets were intended; but disdaining all
considerations, no matter how relevant, that seem to set a premium on
scholarship, I will gladly put my friend and his readers in the way of
carrying out this interesting experiment. They need not jeopardize the
drawing-room furniture. Not far from the house in which Mr. Davies lives
stands a building so large and so silly that it can scarcely have
escaped his admiration. It is the Victoria and Albert Museum; and any
one who cares to step inside can see a fair collection of Oriental
carpets hanging picture-wise against the wall--hanging in frames too. I
shall be very much surprised if the more sensitive of those who trouble
to pay them a visit do not feel that these carpets are as aesthetically
satisfactory on the wall as they would be on the floor, and I shall be
amazed if they do not feel also that they are as definitely works of art
as the objects that adorn the walls of the Tate Gallery.
My purpose is to discover the quality common and peculiar to works of
art. I have suggested that this quality is what I call Significant
Form--i.e. combinations of lines and colours that are in themselves
moving. A good many people besides Mr. Davies have blamed me for giving
the name Significant Form to just that form which seems to signify
nothing. I adopted the term with hesitation, and I shall sacrifice it
without pain if something better can be found to take its place. All the
same, I did try to explain what I meant by it. I speak of Significant
Form in contradistinction to Insignificant Beauty--the beauty of gems
or of a butterfly's wing, the beauty that pleases, but does not seem to
provoke that peculiar thrill that we call an aesthetic emotion. I
suggested very cautiously that the explanation of this difference might
lie in the fact that the forms created by an artist express, or in some
way transmit, an emotion felt by their creator, whereas the forms of
nature, so far as most of us are concerned, do not seem to hand on
anything so definite. But about this part of my theory I was, and still
am, extremely diffident, and I mention it here only in the hope of
justifying what has seemed to many sensible people a silly name.
At the beginning of my book I was at some pains to explain why I held
that all systems of aesthetics must be based on personal experience. I
said that my purpose was to discover some quality common and peculiar to
all works that moved me aesthetically, and I invited those whose
experience did not tally with mine--and whose experience does tally
exactly with that of any one else?--to discover some other quality
common and peculiar to all the objects that so moved them. I said that
in elaborating a theory of aesthetics an author must depend entirely on
his own experience, and in my book I depended entirely on mine. There
are people to whom a simple statement of this sort comes as a pressing
invitation to score cheaply:--So now we know what art is, it is
whatever you are pleased to honour with your approval. "But why should
Mr. Bell suppose that the forms that move him are the only ones proper
to move others?" says Mr. Davies.
"Again, it is as foolish for Mr. Bell, or any other individual, to
say, as he does say, that Frith's _Paddington Station_ is not a
work of art as it would be for me to say that rhubarb tart--which I
detest--is not food. If I were the only person in the world who ate
anything, then, I admit, I should be right in saying that it was
not food--for it would not be, because I should never eat it. And
if Mr. Bell were the only spectator of works of art on earth, he
would have a perfect right to say that _Paddington Station_ was not
a work of art. But as he is not the only person on earth--if he
will forgive me for mentioning the fact--he has no right to say
that it is not a work of art."
If this were anything more respectable than one of those pieces of grave
but delicate sarcasm for which I am told Mr. Davies is famous, it would
be perilous doctrine in the mouth of a professional art critic. We have
no right to say that something is not a work of art so long as other
people say that it is. The poor fellow who has gone through with a
picture to the very end and has got it hung will always, I suspect,
consider it a work of art; and I hope that some of his friends will have
the humanity to back him up. Therefore ... well, we must be catholic.
But Mr. Randall Davies, who deals out, week after week, column after
column of aesthetic judgments, may surely be invited by his readers to
disclose the criteria by which he distinguishes between works of art and
rubbish. If a work of art be that which any one judges to be a work of
art, we may as well consult the first policeman we meet instead of going
for an opinion to a paid expert.
If Mr. Davies had understood the very simple language in which I stated
my position, he would have realized that when I say that _Paddington
Station_ is not a work of art I mean that _Paddington Station_ does not
provoke in me an aesthetic emotion, and that I believe we can have no
reason for thinking a thing to be a work of art except that we feel it
to be one. _Paddington Station_ did not move me; therefore I had no
reason for judging it a work of art, but, of course, I may have looked
at the picture stupidly and remained insensitive to the real
significance of its forms. If Mr. Davies had understood the very simple
language in which I stated my position, he would have realized that,
far from making a claim to infallibility in aesthetic judgments, I
insisted on the fact that we might all disagree about particular works
of art and yet agree about aesthetics. But if Mr. Davies had been able to
catch the general drift of my book, he would have understood that
whether _Paddington Station_ moves me or whether it leaves me cold is a
matter of secondary importance. The point of first importance is whether
a person who is moved in the same sort of way by _Paddington Station_
and a Sung bowl and Sta. Sophia and a Persian carpet can find any
quality common and peculiar to all save that which I have called
Significant Form.
That is the problem. It is not quite so simple as I have had to make it
appear. Some day I hope to answer the pertinent questions raised by Mr.
Roger Fry and other critics. In my book I have examined my own
experience in the hope of inducing my readers to examine theirs. What do
they say? Are they really talking nonsense when they speak of "works of
art," including under that head pictures, pots, buildings, textiles,
etc.? If they are not, what characteristic distinguishes the species? Do
they not feel as much emotion for a picture of a round of beef as for a
picture of the Crucifixion, and do they feel less for a Sassanian
textile? If what they had taken for a jug turns out to be a
paper-weight; if, as sometimes happens in a battered fresco, what was
said to be the Heavenly host is proved to be a pack of licentious
Florentines, do they really have to readjust their aesthetic attitude? If
people who are capable of feeling and of analysing their feelings will
give me honest answers to these questions, I shall be even more grateful
to them than I am to Mr. Davies for his facetious advertisement of my
book.
FOOTNOTE:
[18] I wonder what Mr. Davies really said. Any one who cares to know has
only to consult the _New Statesman_ for March 7 or 14, 1914. I have not
a copy by me. It looks as though there had been a pretty firm offer of
some sort: it came to nothing, alas!
PICTURE SHOWS
I
THE LONDON SALON
[Sidenote: _Athenaeum_ _July 1912_]
There are many reasons for approving of the London Salon. For one thing
it is the only place in England where pictures are hung without any
selection being made. The fate of the Salon d'Automne, formerly the most
interesting exhibition in Europe, could be cited to discredit the jury
system, were it not that the system had discredited itself even more
effectually in this country by making it appear that British art had
ceased to exist. No matter how good the intentions of a jury may be,
inevitably it comes to be dominated by a clique of painters who imagine
that they are setting a high standard by rejecting all pictures
sufficiently unlike their own. In France, therefore, "Les Independants"
have become the representatives of contemporary art, while English
people who hope to discover something vital at home must betake
themselves to the Albert Hall.
But there is more than this to be said for the London Salon: its
standard of painting is far higher than that of the Royal Academy or of
the New English Art Club. For this we have chiefly to thank Mr. Walter
Sickert and his pupils. They set the tone. It is extraordinary that any
master should have led so many pupils so far along the road to art. All
have been taken to that point where work ceases to appear utterly
negligible. All have been made to search life for realities, and not for
pictures. They have been taught to simplify and to select; and they have
been taught not to select the obvious, the romantic, and the pretty.
They have not been taught, however, to discover and express the
profoundly significant, for that cannot be taught. Even Mr. Sickert
cannot turn sincere and intelligent painters into artists.
Entering the arena, the visitor will probably turn first to the large
picture by Mr. Wyndham Lewis. To appreciate this, he should take the
lift to the gallery, whence, having shed all irrelevant prejudices in
favour of representation, he will be able to contemplate it as a piece
of pure design. He will be able to judge it as he would judge
music--that is to say, as pure, formal expression. So judging, he cannot
fail to be impressed by the solidity of the composition, to which the
colour is not an added charm, but of which it is an integral part; he
will feel that the picture holds together as a unity in the way that a
good sonata holds, in a way that nothing else does in this exhibition;
also he will feel a certain dissatisfaction which may cause him to
inquire whether Mr. Lewis has altogether succeeded in expressing
himself. We believe that he has not. There is a laboriousness about this
work which seems to represent the artist's unsuccessful struggle to
realize in paint his mental conception; and it is for this reason that
we admire it rather as a promise of something great than as an
achievement.
The other striking thing in the arena is Mr. Epstein's statue.
Approached from behind, as the present writer approached it, this has
very much the air of an important work of art; and that it well may be.
Closer examination, however, raises some doubts. Is it, perhaps, only
the imitation of one? Mr. Epstein is a baffling artist. His skill and
scholarship are amazing, and he seems to have convictions; but what are
they? Has he merely a brilliant gift for description, helped out and
sophisticated by a subtle taste? Or has he a queer entangled sense of
the significance of form. Is he a plastic artist or an extraordinarily
gifted statuary? Even if this work be an imitation, how admirable a one
is it! That Mr. Epstein should combine with the taste and intelligence
to perceive the beauty of Mexican sculpture the skill and science to
reproduce its fine qualities is surely something to note and admire.
There is enough in this figure, imitative though it be, to secure for
its author pre-eminence amongst living British sculptors.[19]
A third work in this part of the hall has attracted some attention. It
is a picture of the coronation of George V. by one Fernand Piret, a
French aviator--so the story goes--who never before dabbled in terrene
arts. It may be so. In any case he has contrived a mordant comment on
that memorable and mystic ceremony.
Upstairs, the best things are two charming pictures by Mr. S. F. Gore.
It is a joy to watch the progress of this good artist. The patient and
unpretentious labour of his experimental years is being handsomely
rewarded. Mr. Gore is finding himself; we never doubted that he was well
worth finding. Mr. Gilman, too, is steadily becoming more interesting;
but Mr. Ginner has, as yet, hardly fulfilled the promise of his early
work. The delicate sensibility and fine scholarship which M. Lucien
Pissarro chooses to conceal beneath a presentment of almost exaggerated
modesty will escape no one whose eyes have not been blinded by the flush
of fashionable vulgarity, of which, happily, there is very little here.
The London Salon is no place for those who are, or who hope to become,
portrait-makers at "a thousand" a head.
All the creditable work to be found in this exhibition is not to be
mentioned in one article. The pictures by Miss Helen Saunders, painted
surely under the influence of Mr. Etchells; _The Omnibus_, by Mr.
Adeney; the works of Mrs. Louise Pichard, Mr. Malcolm Drummond, Mr. J.
B. Yeats, and Mr. W. B. C. Burnet; that rather pretentious piece, _Les
Deux Amies_, by Madame Renee Finch; and _The Cot_, a charming little
picture by Mrs. Ogilvie--all deserve more attention than any overworked
critic is likely to give them. They are, for the most part, accomplished
paintings that provoke no doubts and no outrageous hopes.
FOOTNOTE:
[19] 1917: A friendly critic reading this paragraph suggests that it
might stand fairly as a description of Me[vs]trovi['c]. I cannot agree.
Epstein is in every respect superior to the Serbian sculptor, in whose
work there can be no question of anything but _pastiche_. It has been
said that it expresses the soul of Serbia. I know nothing of that. What
I do know, what every one familiar with modern art knows, is that it
expresses nothing but what can be learnt by any clever student in the
schools of Vienna, Munich, and Paris.
II
ENGLISH POST-IMPRESSIONISTS
[Sidenote: _Nation Oct. 1913_]
It is said that Cezanne was in the habit of describing himself as a
pupil of Camille Pissarro. The belief is popular, and may be well
founded; at any rate, it has emboldened Mr. Rutter to overstock his
"Post-Impressionist and Futurist Exhibition" with unimportant works by
this distinguished Impressionist. Surely a couple of examples would have
sufficed to illustrate the latest, and best, theory of aesthetics. For
that is the service performed on this occasion by the works of Pissarro.
They mark that difference in purpose between three schools, an
understanding of which will enable the intelligent student to pick his
way across the depths and shallows of contemporary art.